Developing phonemic awareness and mastering rhyming is crucial for our kinders, but do you ever feel you repeatedly do the same rhyming activities every day? Do you love all your rhyming picture books and matching games but sometimes want to change things up?
I know how essential it is for rhyming activities to be fun and engaging for our students, and we know you want that too! So, I have compiled this list of 30 Rhyming Activities for your students. Each one will engage your students and be no prep for you! I have included games, videos, books, and more that will be fantastic for your classroom! I especially love #9, #13, and #21.
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Rhyming Games and Centers
This “Making Rhyming Words” center is a part of the March Centers Bundle! Students will create, then blend, and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words.
2. Rhyming Jars
For this activity, you will need popsicle sticks, baby food jars, and colored tape. Write the rhyme on the tape and place it on the jar. Then, you write rhyming words directly on sticks or, if you are adventurous, little tape flags. Kids will take all of the popsicle sticks with pre-written words and place them in the baby food jar marked with the rhyme.
3. Rhyming Match Up
Students will find and produce rhyming words by matching the pictures on the rhyming cards.
4. Rhyming I Spy
With this activity, I look around the room and say something like, “I spy something that rhymes with fable.” Kids are allowed to yell until someone replies ‘table’. I then pick something else in the room, or you can then pass the “I Spy” to another student.
5. Find Your Rhyming Partner
Kids need to move, and if they get to interact with classmates in a fun way, bonus! For this activity, hand out cards that have their rhyming match in the deck. Every student gets a card and keeps it hidden from everyone. Students move around the room at the word “go”, looking for the other student that has their rhyme.
Never Enough Games!
6. Use Bean Bags
You will say a word such as “hat”. You will then pass a bean bag to the student. The student will think of a word that rhymes with hat, say the word that rhymes, and then give the bean bag to another student. The game continues with the bean bag being passed around to different students until no one can think of more rhyming words. That student then gets to say a new word and the game continues.
7. Clip-It Rhyming Center
This “Clip-It Rhyming Center!” activity is a part of the October Centers Bundle! Students will orally produce single-syllable words by matching the picture puzzles and blending them, using a clothespin to clip it.
More Rhyming Games
8. Rhyming Movement Game
If your name rhymes with Rames, touch your toes. The students enjoy having their names mentioned for anything positive in Kindergarten. During transitions, I will use several names and have kids do a directive.
9. I Have, Who Has is an interactive activity PERFECT as a warm-up for your lesson, practice for a new concept or skill, review, small groups, and more! Choose from 3 different rhyming card sets, or use them all and practice multiple times throughout the year. Great for a Fun Friday activity or canceled recess!
10. Rhyming Name Game
Not Rames, James. My kiddos began doing this while doing Heggerty, and they love it. Although we continue to do the game with categories, they especially love it when I change the onset for all students’ names. I say Rames, and they say back to me, not Rames, James.
11. Swatting Rhymes
In my small groups, I put out pictures of a variety of things. When it is a child’s turn, I will say a rhyme to one of the pictures. The student, in turn, uses a fly swatter to swat the rhyming picture. They love this one!
12. Rhyming Jenga/Blocks
Who knew that students could use Jenga Blocks in so many educational ways?! I write word families on the blocks, and the students take turns removing blocks that rhyme until they run out of rhymes or their tower collapses!
Rhyming Activities for Centers or Whole Group
13. Write the Room Kindergarten Edition gets the students up and moving around with varying recording sheets for teacher preference to match each student’s pace.
14. Rhyming Basket, Lunch Bag, or Book with an Anchor Chart
For this particular activity, the goal is to write as many word family words as possible on an anchor chart. I love to change it up each time, so once in a while, I will use a rhyming book, and other times maybe I will pull something from a bag or a basket.
15. Rhyming Books for Kids
For a free downloadable list of rhyming books that are great for kindergarteners, click on the link!
16. Rhyming Yes/No
This activity is no prep at all! I say two words, and the students raise their hands if they rhyme or put their hands in their lap if they don’t rhyme. Easy Peasy!
17. Rhyming “Pears”
Your students will have fun matching the rhyming “pears” in this activity. As part of our intervention kit, you can use this resource with a select few students to help them master rhyming identification skills.
More, More, More!
18. Heggerty Phonemic Awareness
35 weeks of daily systematic phonological and phonemic awareness lessons’, which of course include rhyming! If you are looking for a supplemental activity for whole or small groups, I personally love Heggerty. Although read by the script, my kinders love it, especially when I exaggerate the hand motions!
19. Rhyming Telephone
Do you remember the game telephone? One person starts and whispers in the ear of the next person. Each person turns to the person next to them and whispers the same to that person. The twist for this is each child adds a rhyming word/word family word as they go on. By the end, the last child should be whispering back several rhyming words.
Additional Centers and Rhyming Activities
20. Word Family Card Flip Books
These word family cards are a steal! I make a laminated set to run through them in my small groups, but the kiddos will want some of their own!
21. Kindergarten Literacy Centers
By choosing this resource, you will be getting 24 downloadable Kindergarten Reading Stations to help you through the year, including rhyming and word family activities.
22. Word Family or Rhyming Substitutions with Letter Cards. My kiddos all have a Ziploc filled with cardstock letters. Every day, we will use those cards to build words, and the easiest words to start with are word families! I will ask them to spell out a word like b-a-t with their cards. Then, I will say ok, now take away the ‘b’ and make the word, cat. What letter did you use? Or other times, I will say, replace the ‘b’ with a ‘c,’ What word do you now have?
23. Rhyming Interactive Notebook Activity
Your students can create a reference for rhyming words that they can use over and over again. Work those fine motor skills into rhyming matching activities within an interactive notebook project.
Additional Games!
24. Digital Rhyming Games
Keep the rhyming fun going with a digital twist on learning. This is one of three different activities in the rhyming game set. Your students will look at the top picture and then slide one of the circles over the other word that rhymes. Other activities include matching images that rhyme and creating rhyming words by manipulating alphabet tiles.
25. Rhyming Sticks.
Like Jenga blocks, popsicle sticks are so versatile in the classroom! Write out rhymes on sticks and have kids match. Or, turn those sticks into a game for one!
26. File Folder Games
Create engaging games for students to practice and learn rhyming words. Your students can play the Three in a Row game with a partner as an early finisher. Students will flip over a picture card and then find the word on the grid. The first player to place 3 chips in a row wins.
27. Seasonal Rhyming Activities
If you haven’t checked out my monthly packets yet, there are some pretty fun rhyming activities in there! Your students can match rhyming pictures and color a set of words that rhyme, all while celebrating the seasons throughout the year.
And MOVE with these Rhyming Activities!
28. Exercise, Rhyme, AND FREEZE!
In this video, ‘Jack Hartmann shares word pairs and asks the students to respond physically based on whether or not the pair rhyme. For example, if the words rhyme, they continue to do the exercise. If the words do not rhyme, students must freeze!’
29. Rocco the Rhyming Rhino
Who doesn’t love Jack Hartmann? Okay, realistically, I know a few of you might not, but the kiddos love his videos!
30. YouTube Videos that Teach Phonics
They are a great tool to get your students up and moving while learning phonics skills. Without those letter sounds and word families, rhyming isn’t happening for your kiddos!
WRITTEN BY: SUZANNE KELLEY
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